We sang a hymn all about the cross on Sunday and it was a
good one: Lift high the cross. It felt
appropriate too as the sermon had been based on Jesus’ invitation for us to ‘take
up our cross’ and follow him.
Lent is, in some ways, the season of the Cross, after all
it’s the destination of Jesus as he travels south from Galilee towards
Jerusalem with its ‘greenhill outside the city walls’.
In his book: Hanging by a Thread Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin in the Fields captures our attention with a provocative one liner: There was a time when the cross was an answer…Today the cross is a question.
He’s asking us to re-examine the place of the cross in our faith.
I did that the other day talking to a friend who comes from the Roman Catholic tradition. He, very genuinely, asked me why all the crosses in our church were empty? I replied with what is probably a very usual answer for Protestants; something about us believing Jesus is no longer hanging there. He understood my response but challenged me as he shared how important it is for him to see a bodily representation of Jesus upon the cross, reminding him that actually we don’t believe in an empty cross but Jesus physically dying upon it.
Well it made me think as he said it and I’ve been thinking about it ever since!
In his book: Hanging by a Thread Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin in the Fields captures our attention with a provocative one liner: There was a time when the cross was an answer…Today the cross is a question.
He’s asking us to re-examine the place of the cross in our faith.
I did that the other day talking to a friend who comes from the Roman Catholic tradition. He, very genuinely, asked me why all the crosses in our church were empty? I replied with what is probably a very usual answer for Protestants; something about us believing Jesus is no longer hanging there. He understood my response but challenged me as he shared how important it is for him to see a bodily representation of Jesus upon the cross, reminding him that actually we don’t believe in an empty cross but Jesus physically dying upon it.
Well it made me think as he said it and I’ve been thinking about it ever since!
Later in his book Sam Wells says: On Good Friday Jesus doesn’t conquer.
He’s humiliated…
There’s so much truth in that statement. Jesus shows us the heights of our humanity by dying with forgiveness, meeting violence with peace and laying down his life for a message of justice that was rejected by the power loving authorities. He shows us another way. A better way. Yet it is a way of love that ultimately ends in personal suffering and humiliation. A tough way that even brings a cry of dereliction from his lips as he prays: My God, My God why have you forsaken me?
There’s so much truth in that statement. Jesus shows us the heights of our humanity by dying with forgiveness, meeting violence with peace and laying down his life for a message of justice that was rejected by the power loving authorities. He shows us another way. A better way. Yet it is a way of love that ultimately ends in personal suffering and humiliation. A tough way that even brings a cry of dereliction from his lips as he prays: My God, My God why have you forsaken me?
I think it was the Queen, in a message sent to the people
of New York after 9/11 who said: Grief is
the price you pay for love.
Strikes me that if we seek to love like Jesus it will not be easy to go the distance and often it will appear foolish to those who look on.
Some hymns we sing about the cross carry a sentiment that I’m not sure rings true with the awfulness of that first Good Friday.
Sir John Bowring was not only a Victorian Governor of Hong Kong but also a hymnwriter. In the cross of Christ I glory is one of his and has this line: …from the cross the radiance streaming adds more lustre to the day. I sort of get what he is saying but I don’t find it the most helpful interpretation of Calvary.
What happened at Golgotha was cruel, agonising, unjust and evil. Jesus suffered because of love. He was killed because his way of life threatened the status quo.
It’s mind blowing to then realise his invitation to us is ‘take up your cross and follow me’.
Strikes me that if we seek to love like Jesus it will not be easy to go the distance and often it will appear foolish to those who look on.
Some hymns we sing about the cross carry a sentiment that I’m not sure rings true with the awfulness of that first Good Friday.
Sir John Bowring was not only a Victorian Governor of Hong Kong but also a hymnwriter. In the cross of Christ I glory is one of his and has this line: …from the cross the radiance streaming adds more lustre to the day. I sort of get what he is saying but I don’t find it the most helpful interpretation of Calvary.
What happened at Golgotha was cruel, agonising, unjust and evil. Jesus suffered because of love. He was killed because his way of life threatened the status quo.
It’s mind blowing to then realise his invitation to us is ‘take up your cross and follow me’.
Brian Wren’s hymn about the cross is one I find deeply disturbing, challenging and comforting all at the same time.
Here are a few verses:
Here hangs a man discarded,
a scarecrow hoisted high,
a nonsense pointing nowhere
to all who hurry by.
Yet here is help and comfort
for lives by comfort bound
when drums of dazzling progress
give strangely hollow sound.
Life, emptied of all meaning,
drained out in bleak distress,
can share in broken silence
our deepest emptiness.
And love that freely entered
the pit of life’s despair,
can name our hidden darkness
and suffer with us there.
Cross -words to make us think and ponder afresh the ‘one who hung and suffered there’.
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